Since the turn of the millennium, the European Anglophone literary scene has seen a  growing prominence of Scottish and Irish fiction. This is evidenced by the numerous awards  given to writers of Scottish and Irish origin and/or residence over the last two decades. What  is particularly remarkable about this productivity is the ability of these writers to combine  an interest in identities that can be significantly characterised as local/regional or migrant,  with the ability to represent, on the global stage of the West, all the thematic and genre  trends closely connected to the most pressing current events and the urgencies of  contemporaneity.

Climate change and eco-anxieties, the disintegration of democracy and  civil coexistence, the culture of hate and apocalyptic imaginings of the future, identity  politics and, in particular, the question of identities and gender relations are promptly and  appropriately articulated in a stylistic-expressive variety that ranges from particularly  effective and original forms of realism to speculative and dystopian tendencies intertwined  with all possible narrative subgenres.

Authors such as Ali Smith or Paul Lynch, to name just  a couple among many others, have shown the ability to renew contemporary literary canons  by combining stylistic innovation and formal experimentation with a firm grasp on  contemporary reality, problematising its observation and narration. Both from the  perspective of the stories and themes they address and from the formal perspective of  linguistic and expressive research, these two literary scenes are therefore extremely  interesting and capable of intersecting critical perspectives informed by the most recent  theories in the fields of the post-humanities and metamodernism.